C.H. Robinson sells T-Chek unit

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

Global logistics provider C.H. Robinson Worldwide on Tuesday announced the sale of its payment services business, T-Chek Systems, to Electronic Funds Source LLC for $302.5 million in cash.
T-Chek is a major provider of payment services to for-hire and private trucking fleets, as well as other industries. Truck drivers use T-Chek pre-paid cards and fuel cards to purchase fuel and services at truck stops. Companies use the system to monitor and control their costs.
T-Chek's technology supports a variety of funds transfers, vendor payments, fuel purchasing and online expense management tools.
T-Chek has been a C.H. Robinson subsidiary since 1984. At $52 million, it represented about 4 percent of Robinson's net revenues. The company has about 190 employees, according to a C.H. Robinson presentation for investors.
C.H. Robinson, the largest truck broker in North America, will continue to buy services from T-Chek to advance funds to its contract carriers and employee expense card services, officials said.
“We are proud of T-Chek’s success and of T-Chek’s employees, who built a very strong business with a long track record of growth,” Chief Executive Officer John P. Wiehoff said in a statement. “As the payment services industry continues to consolidate and evolve, scale and alignment with the financial services sector are becoming increasingly important. EFS is an excellent organization and we felt, for T-Chek’s long term success, that strategically it was the right time for T-Chek to join forces with EFS.”
Officials said the evolution of T-Chek to financial services made the business less strategic to Robinson. - Eric Kulisch